


Sergeant Cockblock

by BookofOdym



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types, The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Multi, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 14:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16097450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookofOdym/pseuds/BookofOdym
Summary: Hal has been in love with John for decades, well aware that he has no chance with the man whatsoever. John has only just started coming to terms with his feelings for Hal after struggling with them for years. Barry wants Ollie to stop getting Hal drunk.OrJohn is a 9 out of 10 and Hal is the 1 he needs.





	Sergeant Cockblock

The sun had already set in Coast City by the time that John alighted on the ground, remembering that Hal somehow still technically had a secret identity he had waited until a group of cars had passed before he landed. He didn’t want his partner getting exposed to the press.

He opened the gate to a familiar house. John had been the one responsible for designing it, he still remembered Oliver trying to disguise his voice as he commissioned it. It had been the fifth time that Hal had been evicted that year, John would have designed the house even if Ollie hadn’t tried to sneak it past him.

Hal was just slipping his key into the lock as John stepped out of the shadows behind him, illuminating the front porch with green light, he moved quietly enough that Hal whipped around ready for a fight. It wouldn’t make sense for a marine to make too much noise as he moved, though, while pilots apparently could be heard from three miles away.

John gripped Hal’s fist with his own open hand before he could even swing a punch.

“John?” Hal asked, the sleep apparent in his voice, he sounded relieved, but it was obvious that what he really wanted to do right now was head inside and go to sleep. He also sounded a little drunk. John would lecture him about walking home alone while drunk if he thought it wouldn’t immediately go out the other ear.

John reached around his partner, opening the door so that he could push Hal inside. Even Coast City could be dangerous at night and not just for villain related reasons. In fact, if the Earth villains were the people most likely to grab Hal in the dark John would probably be a lot less worried.

“Who else would it be? Unless you got followed home from the bar again.” He followed it up with a stern look, one that, as expected, Hal looked completely oblivious to. It wasn’t Hal’s fault, but he tended to be a little less aware of his surroundings than he should be. John would never forget the time that he came over and found someone trying to break into the house.

“Hey, do you want some coffee? I have some Yirgacheffe,” Hal pronounced it ‘Yur-gur-chef’. It was horrifying. John watched him struggle with it and tried not to think that it was cute. The part of him that thought that Hal was cute was actually overruling the part that desperately needed to correct him.

The fact that Hal was attentive enough to keep a friend’s favorite brand of coffee in his house only made his predicament worse.

“Want it Affogato Style?”

John narrowed his eyes at him. “Absolutely not. Perish.”

Hal was laughing at him, the bastard, and John made sure to stay close to Hal as he made the coffee. He’d told Hal before that he liked smelling the coffee as it was brewed, Hal would never think that he was basking in the warmth emanating from his friend and partner.

He also didn’t trust Hal to not get the ice cream out of the freezer if he didn’t keep watch on him.

His hand strayed to the other man’s waist and Hal turned around suddenly, offering a mug. The mug had the words “Blow me. I’m hot.” printed on it. John glared directly at them, feeling like they were mocking him, before turning his gaze to Hal himself.

“I don’t have a high tea set, sue me.” Hal shrugged, and John reached out to take the mug from him. Their fingers touched for a moment too long, John had to make a note of how warm Hal’s fingers were against his own. God, he was too far gone.

Before he could even take one sip, Hal had moved forward so that he could burrow his face into John’s shoulder. His arms wrapped around John’s middle, holding him tight, and John had to move his coffee into his off hand to avoid burning his friend with it. John tried to pretend that he couldn’t feel the warm, hard muscle pressing up against him from under that flight jacket. It was a losing battle.

“Tired?” He asked, wrapping the arm that wasn’t holding his coffee around Hal. This was pretty normal for them, or at least it had been before he’d taken over as Corps Leader and had been worried about the appropriateness of the action. He’d been a fool; their relationship hadn’t changed in any way with the new power dynamics. Mostly because Hal never followed his orders anyway.

“Long day,” he managed to translate, Hal’s mouth was pressing directly into his deltoid, so his voice was slightly muffled. “Carol made me do paperwork.”

He sounded so petulant, John couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face at that. John brought the mug up to his lips to hide the smile before Hal could glance up at him.

The coffee ran over his tongue, it tasted weaker than it should. “Come on Hal, I’ve told you already, the French Press-”

Lips pressed softly against his chin, cutting him off, and John stared directly into the sleepy eyes of his partner in complete shock.

“I was thinking of heading to bed soon, are you coming?” Both of them had nightmares pretty regularly, they had set up an arrangement in the weeks after Hal’s resurrection where they would share a bed on some nights. The nights one which they slept together were practically the only nights where they could get any sleep at all.

Again, they hadn’t done anything like sleep in the same bed since John had become the leader of the Green Lantern Corps. John hadn’t gotten much sleep at all since he had taken the role. Managing nearly 10,000 people who were on call every hour of the day meant that he could be woken at any moment.

If John was honest though, he had missed having a warm body next to him as he slept.

* * *

 

Stupid, stupid, stupid, he had been so stupid.

Hal had been the one to invite John over. He had missed the man, he felt that they hadn’t really spent that much time together since even before Hal had been the leader of the Corps. John had been distant since he had taken over, at first, he thought that it had been because John was mad at him, and maybe he wasn’t wrong.

He felt like John was pushing him away, which hurt, but it wasn’t exactly like he wasn’t used to it.

He had to admit that they never did the whole touchy-feely bro hug thing. John didn’t particularly like public displays of affection in public, but he had seemed to enjoy them in private. Back when they had roomed together John had been perfectly comfortable with letting Hal cuddle up to him on the couch. Today though, today he had been so stiff every time Hal had touched him.

Hal thought back to his old school friend, it was difficult not to in this situation and he regretted doing so immediately, it was horrible really, being reminded of someone who never cared about you. Someone who had offered friendship ‘until you found other friends,’ looking back that had probably translated to something like ‘get out of my life within five months’ and him stretching it out to five years had been massively overstaying his welcome.

Having a crush on him had definitely not helped in the slightest.

The other boy had seemed fine one day, but weirdly angry the next. The kind of anger where it was obvious that he was mad for some reason, but he wasn’t going to say anything about it. Just make you stew. Then he had suddenly pulled away.

It was the same kind of sudden pulling away that John was doing now. Maybe he’d figured it out.

Hal had been keeping it fairly secret he thought, he did know that John was way out of his league, telling him was out of the question. He was happy just being his friend and partner, not that they were really partners anymore. He didn’t know how John could have found out though, someone would have had to have told him.

Hal brushed his knuckles lightly over John’s left cheek, watching his eyebrows flutter at the touch. Hal stilled instantly, but luckily John fell back to sleep quickly.

“Guess you really hate me now,” Hal whispered.

He pushed aside the sheets on his side of the bed. Three hours of sleep was probably enough for tonight.

Google wasn’t particularly helpful if for any reason you needed to type in the words “How to get over your crush on your best friend” for one, it seemed to assume that the reader was straight, given that most of the answers on the first page suggested telling them, but then Hal was already fairly sure that trusting Wikihow for something like this could ruin your life.

No contact was also not an option. John would probably be incredibly angry if Hal started ignoring his ring messages, and he would definitely decide to track Hal down to whatever primitive planet that he’d gone to hide out on just to yell at him.

“Jesus,” he breathed, slamming down the top of his laptop.

“Hal?” The stairs creaked under John’s bare feet, he was stood on the seventh step, watching Hal carefully. “What are you doing down here?”

Hal’s eyes were far too wide and his body far too twitchy for his answer to be taken with anything less than a gallon of salt. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s the point of us sleeping together.”

Hal rubbed at one of his eyes, betraying the fact that he was in fact still tired. He tried not to react when John sat down next to him and placed a hand on one of Hal’s own, still resting on top of the laptop.

“Talk to me about it,” John’s voice was soft despite the fact that what it spoke was a command and didn’t offer any opportunity for argument.

“John, have you ever been in love with someone who would never love you back?”

* * *

 

John had woken up to an empty bed. His first thought had been that Hal might have just gone to the bathroom but a hand on Hal’s side of the bed quickly dispelled that notion. The sheets where Hal had been sleeping were already cold.

The lights were on downstairs, and John tried to be as quiet as he possibly could as he headed downstairs himself. Hal was hunched over, his eyes were closed, on closer inspection it became obvious that the corners of his eyes were wet with tears.

The stairs gave away his position before he could creep any further towards Hal, a loud creak came as John winced, the pilot twisted towards him, looking panicked. John almost felt guilty about surprising him, but that feeling was swiftly replaced by one of worry for his friend.

John took one of Hal’s hands in his own, even as he was being clearly and obviously lied to. He knew that Hal had his own reasons for doing so, and really, it was obvious that whatever was going on meant that he really couldn’t sleep, it wasn’t a direct lie. However, he needed to know what was going on if he was to help in any way. “Talk to me about it,” he said, rubbing Hal’s hand with his own thumb, trying to offer some semblance of comfort.

The news that Hal was in love with someone else hit John like an arrow in the chest. He squeezed Hal’s hand just a little bit too tight as his heart felt like it was collapsing in on itself, but Hal wouldn’t read that as anything other than an attempt to comfort him.

But one face came into John’s mind at Hal’s question. The face of Barry Allen.

“Yes,” He answered, with more pain in his voice than Hal had ever heard from him before.

* * *

 

Barry opened his eyes and was immediately assaulted by kisses. “Hm, morning,” Barry murmured into the kiss. Iris was straddling his hips, she was wearing only a bra and panties. Did that mean what he thought it meant? He gazed up at her pleadingly.

“You don’t need to go to work until ten today.” She splayed her fingers out, pressing her open palms over his pecs.

Barry smirked and dipped his fingers down past the hem of her panties. He began to vibrate them. She gave a small moan.

A loud banging came from the door of the apartment.

Barry and Iris stopped, then looked between each other and the clock. It was only six in the morning.

“We could leave it?” Iris suggested. No one would come by their apartment this early in the morning.

They got right back to kissing, and for a few moments it seemed like whoever was outside the door had gone, then the loud banging started right back up.

Barry groaned, pushing himself out of bed, luckily, he was already wearing his boxers. It was freezing cold and he cursed at whoever was at the door.

Finally, he swung open the front door, only to see John Stewart standing there, hand resting on the door frame.

“John?” Barry was confused, his first thought was that there was some sort of emergency that John needed his help with, but John was dressed in Civvies, a too tight navy t-shirt (that looked like it had been stolen from Hal’s wardrobe, unless John was in the habit of wearing shirts emblazoned with the words ‘Come in Me Bro!’, Barry guessed that he hadn’t noticed yet) and a khaki jacket. “What are you doing here?” Maybe they’d finally had sex, but he doubted it, it was four in Coast City. John wouldn’t have left yet.

“Can I come in?” John pressed his hand into the back of his head, entwining his fingers in the curls of his cropped military style cut.

Barry, still confused, opened the door further to let John in.

It was only moments later that John cut directly to the chase. He didn’t even let Barry offer him any coffee.

“I want you to let Hal down easy.”

Now Barry was the one who needed coffee.

“Let Hal down easy?” He asked slowly. Maybe he had misheard John. That was the only explanation that he could think of.

“He’s clearly in love with you, Barry, he’s hurting.”

John said it so intently, but Barry couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped him. John snapped a glare in his direction.

“Sorry, I just, how did you miss that he’s completely in love with you?” The bedroom door clicked open behind him and Iris stepped out, wearing one of Barry’s heavy and oversized bathrobes. “I’ve had to stop him trying to seduce you so many times.”

He watched as John’s eyes practically bugged out of his head, and Iris took the opportunity to speak up. “Was that the time he was sobbing on our couch or the time he got drunk on Halloween and Oliver tried to convince him to go to John’s workplace in a slutty cat costume?”

“The latter,” Barry said, some distaste clear in his voice. “Ollie needs to be less of a sadist. I only caught him two blocks away from the office.”

“Want me to send you the pics, John?” Iris asked with an obvious wink.

John nodded, but it wasn’t clear if he was aware what he had agreed to, his mind was obviously elsewhere.

“Want some coffee, John?” Barry asked out of pity, the man’s world had obviously just been rocked to its very foundations, plus Barry’s good host instincts had been bugging him since John had first arrived here.

John coughed. Now he was clearly back with them. Barry wondered if John had actually been imagining the costume, or if it had been something more innocent. “No, uh, I should be getting back to Coast City.”

Hal had ended up going to work early, John had been gone by the time he had woken up, but that wasn’t strange for him. John lived and worked in Detroit and he often left early so that he could get ready for work.

* * *

 

Hal couldn’t concentrate on his work at all (not that he ever could), his mind kept going back to the face that John had made last night. Part of him hated whoever had made John hurt like that. Part of him hated himself for reminding John of them. He should call him and apologize.

A paper bag was dropped on his desk.

“You don’t have any food in your cupboards again. I checked. I’m not sure how you thought you could get away with it.” John’s deep voice explained. “I know that you didn’t eat breakfast.”

Hal tore open the bag, it contained a breakfast sandwich, filled up with scrambled eggs, black beans and jalapeño slices. The sandwich had disappeared within seconds.

When he finally looked up at John, the other man was gazing down at him with a fond smile.

“That display almost makes me regret what I was about to ask.”

The pilot raised an eyebrow at him. “What you were about to ask?”

John’s smile only grew. “Slutty cat costume?”


End file.
